Josephine Lee Shuk-yin, senior curriculum development officer for personal, social and humanities education at the bureau, said one change from previous drafts was subsuming elements of Hong Kong’s development and cultural characteristics into nine topics of broader historical periods.

In previous drafts, Hong Kong’s history had its own designated subsections to help students understand the city’s connection with the country.

But Professor Leung Yuen-sang, chairman of the committee for revising the junior secondary Chinese history curriculum, said the time dedicated to teaching students about Hong Kong’s development remained the same as before – 10 per cent of the total lesson time across three years.

Hong Kong history should not be the most important part as it is a Chinese history curriculum

Professor Leung Yuen-sang

Leung added the change was motivated by opinions from teachers gathered during four years of review, including two consultation sessions.

“We did not consider whether this would make people feel Hong Kong history is more important or less so,” he said. “In any case, Hong Kong history should not be the most important part as it is a Chinese history curriculum.”

Leung, who is the dean of arts and a professor of history at Chinese University, said the new curriculum was already “Hongkongers’ Chinese history” as it contained more Hong Kong elements than Chinese history taught in other parts of the world.

He said teachers could make use of the reform movement to discuss both the positive and negative effects of the reform movement, but he did not think there was a need to specifically include the protests in the guidelines.

Chen Yan-kai, a Chinese history teacher and deputy director of the Professional Teachers’ Union’s academic department, questioned why the guidelines focused on the period from 1950 to 1953, when addressing the early years of the People’s Republic of China.

Chinese history has in recent years become a subject of controversy with Beijing supporters advocating more emphasis to address the issue of radical separatist thoughts among youngsters.

But pan-democrats fear it could be used as a way to promote a biased view of history.

From the next school year, all Hong Kong secondary schools will be required to teach Chinese history as an independent compulsory subject at the junior levels.

Responding to a recent incident of an Education Bureau review group ruling that a textbook’s description of China as “taking back” Hong Kong in 1997 was problematic, deputy secretary for education Hong Chan Tsui-wah also mentioned there was no list of banned words for publishers.